


Advice

by imsfire



Series: Fragments from the multiverse [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Advice, Chirrut is a Troll, Cultural Differences, Friendship, Gen, Jedhan customs, Team as Family, Teasing, but a very loving one, loving kindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: The rebellion is short of wise elders and their knowledge, but Baze and Chirrut gladly fill that role for those who know them.





	Advice

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a collection of small pieces that don't really go anywhere else.  
> This one is for the noble melanoradrood, the lovely AliciaSinCiudad, and tumblr user thegoodshipstarwars, with love and thanks!

All the Jedhan survivors look to Chirrut and Baze as parental figures and sources of counsel.  Outside of senior command levels elders of any race are in short supply in the rebellion, and sometimes you need the advice of an elder, both for personal questions and for practical things you simply don’t know how to do.  Things it would be hard to ask an admiral, even one as approachable as Ackbar.

It can be a little awkward at times. 

Baze does his best, patiently determined either to have an answer or to find one, or to find someone else who can.  He never knows when someone may turn up, hovering at his side, with their anxious eager eyes and random medical questions, and moral and domestic and childcare questions and _Oh_ , it’s frustrating but he does what he can…  Stain removal, how to cook Argussian spinach, can you still eat old cheese if you cut off the mouldy bits?  Sometimes it flat-out stuns him, the things people think he’ll know.

It isn’t just the Jedhans, either, he notices.  Jyn and Cassian too have both turned to him for advice on occasion.  The first time Jyn comes to him with a random query about social nuances (the relative benefits of winning at sabacc versus “losing gracefully”; it’s a wildly frustrating problem to her because all she can imagine is striving to win until crushed beyond recovery) he feels a flutter of protectiveness and a surge of pride.  Being held in heart as a Senior Uncle, a source of elders’ wisdom, is an honour he’d never looked to have. 

Chirrut has some very peculiar areas of knowledge, of course, and is always happy to share them.  Some things, sometimes, he just _knows_.  But at other times he’ll leg-pull the team dreadfully. 

Jyn prides herself on always spotting his jokes, and plays frivolous tricks back on him for the times when she doesn’t, but Cassian is a painfully easy target, for all that lying and reading lies have been at the core of his life for so long.  It baffles and hurts him to be so easily misled by the blind Guardian.

Bodhi, of course, recognises the ancient tradition at once, and is deeply moved when he’s blessed with one of Chirrut’s wind-ups.  He draws Cassian to one side, the first time he notices how confusing the Captain finds it.

“It’s a Jedhan custom.  It’s called – ugh, how in the stars do I translate it? – loving-jest?  It’s a way of giving someone a sign of your trust.  And when a monk or a Temple Guardian does it, it’s like being given a blessing.”

“By teasing them?” Cassian’s expression is tight.  After a beat he says “Please tell me you don’t do practical jokes as well.”

“Uh, sometimes, yeah…  Would you like me to ask Chirrut not to?”

He doesn’t need to, though, because Chirrut stops love-jesting Cassian.  Bodhi isn’t sure whether Baze told him not to, or if it was one of his moments of just divining what needs to be known, but either way, he refrains from then on from giving that particular form of blessing to the man who only took hurt at it.

When it’s the turn of the next generation, making sure no-one is upset by it is certainly Baze’s doing.  A child growing up in NiJedha would have seen a hundred such blessings played in their family before they were a year old, would have taken it in their stride when it happened to them and welcomed it as part of the fun of life.  The children of the rebellion always get a proper explanation of the tradition before anyone plays a loving-jest on them.

Chiefly it remains something between the Jedhans on base, shared only with those they are closest to.  And even among them, Chirrut never jokes about the ethical and moral questions, or the medical ones.  But you follow his stain removal advice at your peril.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a file marked "Fragments" containing short scenes, inconsequential little bits and pieces and stories that don't go anywhere. So I'll be posting them, and any other short Rogue One fics that don't tie up, here in this series.  
> I've been having a painful crisis of confidence about my writing recently and I'm enormously grateful to the kind online friends who encouraged me today when I nervously shared this first little Fragment fic. And I am endlessly grateful to everyone here on AO3 and on tumblr who has ever given me support, advice, kudos, feedback, comments. Thank you. It really means the world to me.


End file.
